


The Whole Truth

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: Truth Among the Lies [2]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 05:33:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9867209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: The fallout from "To Tell the Truth."





	

Vince had been debriefed to a fare-thee-well. He had spent days talking to humorless men in soulless suits about the pointless details of a failed investigation; he had talked until there were no more words, and then he had started over again. If he had to go over it one more time, his brain was going to implode, all the information sucked out, leaving nothing but a vacuum. And except for his interrogators, the only person he'd been allowed to speak to was Frank, who was still pissed at him, although he was a lot quieter about it. It was against policy to let him talk to anyone in the outside world, in case he should happen to want to slip someone a bit of information he'd withheld from his interrogators. He was getting a little nuts, and Frank wasn't helping; Frank was deliberately not helping. Frank was trying to drive him nuts.

Vince was getting the alone-too-much paranoid blues. He had to struggle not to smart off to his inquisitors; he had to keep reminding himself that they were all on the same side.

He had to keep telling himself that Sonny was back in Jersey where Vinnie wasn't going. He didn't know where he was going, he just knew it wasn't Jersey and it had nothing to do with Sonny.

Probably.

Instead he asked Frank if he could talk to Uncle Mike. Frank looked at him like he was trying to pull something.

"Frank," he said patiently, as though to someone very slow, "Nobody here talks to me except to ask me questions, you don't talk to me at all if you can help it, and I'm not allowed to talk to any civilians. Uncle Mike's not a civilian, so why can't I talk to him?"

"What do you want to talk about?" Frank asked.

"Overthrowing the government," Vince said seriously. "Subverting the system. Committing high crimes and misdemeanors, starting my own organized crime empire. All the stuff the bland suit guys want to be sure I'm not doing."

Frank looked like he was getting a headache and closed his eyes, but he got Vince a phone, then sat down and made himself comfortable, opening his newspaper.

"What are you doing?" Vince asked.

"I'm reading, Vince. You must have seen people do it before."

"Why are you reading in here? Are you seriously going to sit there and listen to my conversation with my Lifeguard?"

"Someone has to keep an eye on you, Vince."

"I'm locked in a government facility! I've got more eyes on me than—" Vince couldn't think of an analogy and Frank looked around his newspaper at him, then started laughing. Vince wasn't crazy about being laughed at, but Frank laughing was a good thing. It was better than Frank giving him a hard time, anyway.

Frank closed his paper and stood up. "All right. Talk to your Uncle. But don't get any ideas."

Vince waited until the door had closed behind him before saying, "Ideas about what, Frank? What kind of ideas do you think I'm going to get? What is wrong with everybody?"

He called the private number, though he had his doubts about how private anything really was on this phone. Frank was probably off in another room right now, listening. Well, if he was, he'd probably come in and take the phone away from Vince just as soon as he asked his first question.

"It's me," Vince said, not giving even his name, let alone his number.

"Vinnie!" Uncle Mike sounded happy to hear from him. "How's it going, man? I didn't think they'd spring you so quick."

"I'm not sprung," Vinnie said. "I'm just going a little crazy with nobody to talk to, so Frank let me call you. Nobody here likes my story."

"Well, taking a nap right after you're told a guy's going to kill you is a . . . unique response," Uncle Mike said.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But Charlie didn't know where I was, so I wasn't in any immediate danger." He had to keep saying that—and it was true—but he had to keep leaving out the part where he'd just gotten laid and eaten half an extra large pizza and drunk a few beers. Sonny's story about the hookers sounded all right, until you thought about it, because when you thought about it, the question became, _Why would an OCB agent check into a motel with a known organized crime . . . criminal and a couple of hookers?_ It was one thing if it was to protect his cover, but he didn't **have** a cover with Sonny anymore. So what was he doing palling around with him? That was what Frank was pissed about, that and the way Vince kept mocking his slip of the tongue and calling Sonny an organized crime . . . criminal.

The truth would have been worse than Sonny's lie, so Vinnie substituted his own: they'd gone there so Sonny could tell him about Charlie. Then Sonny had left, and the room was paid for and— "And you guys make me tired," was what he kept telling the suits. "I never get a good night's sleep here because I feel like I'm being watched all the time, besides which I knew I was gonna have to talk to Frank and have him yell at me, so I postponed it by a couple hours. Or tried to, anyway." They never looked like they believed him, but then, they never looked like they believed him when he said his name was Vincent Michael Terranova, so that didn't mean much.

"Vince," Uncle Mike said, "is there something you're not telling me?"

"You sound like my brother the priest," Vince said, and Uncle Mike laughed. And then, because it was a natural question, "What did Sonny say to you, anyway?" And he kept the high gleefulness out of his voice.

And Uncle Mike didn't laugh. "He was worried about you," he said seriously. "He didn't think you were taking Charlie's threat seriously enough."

Gleeful was the wrong thing to be right now. Wanting to ask exactly what Sonny had said, how had he sounded—that would be worse. It sounded high school, but there was this huge vagueness in Vinnie's head where picturing Sonny talking to Uncle Mike went, and he wanted details. He'd seen Sonny talk to Frank, and it wasn't pretty, but this would be different—

"We'll grab a beer when you get out," Uncle Mike said, and was that a secret code for _I'll tell you all about it when there's nobody listening_ or was Vinnie losing his mind?

 

Only he didn't get out, not all the way. After a final debriefing that the Spanish Inquisitors would have envied, Vince was relegated to a safe house in a DC suburb. Uncle Mike came to visit.

Frank was there, with his own beer and everything, the last thing Vince had expected. And he was in a good mood, which went beyond unexpected.

"He thinks I'm a robot or something," Frank said to Uncle Mike, when Vince expressed his surprise.

"Aren't you, Frank?"

"I never said I thought you were a robot," Vince defended himself. "I think you're a killjoy."

"Is that better or worse?" Uncle Mike asked, and when Frank and Vince made identical comme ci, comme ça hand-wobbling gestures, he burst out laughing.

"I'm not supposed to be making your life joyous, sport," Frank said. "I'm supposed to be making it longer, and making sure you're doing your job."

"I'm doing my job, Frank. Swear to God. Fighting crime, hunting bad guys, all that good stuff."

"You're checking into motel rooms with Sonny Steelgrave," Frank said. "That's not part of your job description."

"Anymore," Uncle Mike put in, and Vince laughed into his beer.

"What can I tell you? Sonny really, really likes me, and he's very persuasive," Vinnie said. Both men were looking at him funny now, Uncle Mike with confusion, Frank with suspicion. "He said he needed to talk to me about Charlie, then he drove me to a motel, and once we were there . . . ." Vinnie shrugged. "You know how it is. Why waste the room. Old times' sake."

Now they were both staring at him as though he'd lost his mind, so Vinnie focused on pouring some more beer into his glass. When he looked up and they were still staring at him, he pretended to be surprised. "What? What did you think we checked into a motel for?"

" **That's** why Steelgrave lied?" Frank said. "He thought we'd think—"

"Yeah, Frank, that's why he lied," Vinnie agreed, going heavy on the obviousness of it. "Sonny's in the mafia, remember? They're a little paranoid about this stuff. If two guys are going into a motel room together, they better have at least one woman with 'em, even if they're only there to steal the TV set. Sonny didn't want anybody, even the OCB, thinking we were secretly in love or something, so he lied. Why you all are acting like Sonny lying to cops is some huge deal, I don't know. He's an—"

"So help me, Vince, if you say that again—"

"—organized crime criminal!"

The last thing in the world Vince expected was for Frank to shake up his beer and spray him with it.

 

Frank had had to go to a PTA meeting. That left Uncle Mike alone with Vince and the spilled beer, which Vince was cleaning up.

"You two seem to be getting along better," Uncle Mike said dryly, making an opening.

"Frank's all right," Vince said. "Some of the time."

"You handled the business with Sonny pretty smoothly," Uncle Mike said, making the opening a little wider, and then he didn't say anything else.

"Yeah, I was afraid I'd give myself away to you," Vince said. "Or I wanted to. I don't know."

That had happened a few times before, Vince suddenly opening up with some personal insight into his own behavior, and it had surprised Uncle Mike then, too. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Better, now, really. I know it's not supposed to matter to me that Sonny really cares for me, but I can't help it. It makes me happy." Vince seemed embarrassed, but not horribly so.

"Nothing wrong with that," Uncle Mike said. "I wouldn't let Frank know, but I think you know that."

"Yeah, I worked that out for myself. Listen, can I ask you a question that's going to sound goofy?"

"Sure, why not? You want to get a pizza, talk a little more?"

"Yeah," Vince said, "I'd like that a lot."

 

"Pissed off and embarrassed," Uncle Mike said judiciously. "He really didn't want to be talking to me, and I had a hard time getting him to tell me who he was."

"Embarrassed leads to pissed off," Vinnie said. "When he talked to you before, he thought you were my uncle."

"He asked if I'd ever tried to reason with you," Uncle Mike said, which made Vinnie blush and laugh. It was so obvious that his feelings for Sonny were strong and deep. "Vince." And again he didn't say anything else.

"I know, it's a ridiculous situation, and if anybody else found out, all hell would break loose. But—" Vinnie shrugged helplessly. "What do I do?"

Uncle Mike shook his head. "It's a new one on me. I worry about you doing your job—"

"I was doing my job!" Vinnie broke in impatiently. "This thing with Sonny's got nothing to do with the case with Charlie going south. I've got no conflict of interest, I didn't pull my punches when it came time to prosecute Sonny. What more can I do?"

He couldn't think of anything. "What kind of assurance do you have Sonny won't show up again?"

And Vinnie sort of half-laughed and rubbed his eyes. "How about none? Does none work for you?"


End file.
